Notes

imprison'd absence of your liberty (6) ] i.e., when you are absent it is though I am in prison.

Here we see Shakespeare's battle to come to terms with his relationship with his flawed lover. Paul Ramsey explains:

The struggle to justify or deny the evils of the friend was costly and virtually continual, taking its strongest and most startling form in lines 58.11-12. . . The friend is the standard; therefore he can do no wrong; when he does wrong, being the source and standard of good, he may forgive himself wrong; he may not be blamed, be he blameworthy or not. The blasphemy and confusion of such attitudes is fundamentally thoroughly serious; the young man is treated with intense religious devotion, and the contradiction of 'lascivious grace' (40.13) is known and hardly to be endured" (The Fickle Glass, p. 144).

Bard Bites ...
In 1609 Thomas Thorpe published Shakespeare's sonnets, no doubt without the author's permission, in quarto format, along with Shakespeare's long poem, The Passionate Pilgrim. The sonnets were dedicated to a W. H., whose identity remains a mystery, although William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, is frequently suggested because Shakespeare's First Folio (1623) was also dedicated to him. Read on...
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Anyone involved in the production of plays in Elizabethan England, from the playwright to the theatre owners, knew that the Master of Revels was the man to impress and fear, for he auditioned acting troupes, selected the plays they would perform, and controlled the scenery and costumes to be used in each production. Read on...
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Twenty-four of Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to a woman. We have little information about this woman, except for a description the poet gives of her over the course of the poems. Shakespeare describes her as 'a woman color'd ill', with black eyes and coarse black hair. Thus, she has come to be known as the "dark lady." Find out...
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Known to the Elizabethans as ague, Malaria was a common malady spread by the mosquitoes in the marshy Thames. The swampy theatre district of Southwark was always at risk. King James I had it; so too did Shakespeare's friend, Michael Drayton. Read on...